Nokia Asha 210 Announced; Specs, Price, Availability

There’s a new phone in Nokia’s Asha lineup. The Finnish company recently launched the Nokia Asha 210 handset, a budget phone with QWERTY keyboard. The phone features a dedicated WhatsApp button, which is said to be replaceable with the Facebook button depending on the market. That should make the Nokia Asha 210 a favorite of chat heads. Apart from WhatsApp, the Nokia Asha 210 comes integrated with Facebook and Twitter. These are almost necessary in the current social-network dependent world.

One of the best features of the Asha 210 is the QWERTY keyboard which is said to be well padded and well-spaced, giving users excellent typing experience on a mobile phone. The keyboard and the menu buttons however take too much space in my opinion, making room for a small 2.4-inch QVGA display with 320×240 resolution with up to 65k colors. This is the same observation I had with the HTC ChaCha.

The Nokia Asha 210 packs a measly 2-megapixel rear camera and has no front-facing camera. You can access the camera through the camera button even without opening the phone. If you want to get “selfie” shots, you are assisted by a voice prompt which tells you if the face is properly framed. There’s Bluetooth-based Nokia’s Slam Technology if you want to share files. The Nokia Asha 210 comes in single and dual-SIM variants using Nokia’s Easy-Swap technology. For battery life, Nokia promises up to 46 days standby with the single SIM model and up to 24 days with Dual SIM.

The Nokia Asha 210 will be available in yellow, cyan, black, magenta and white colors. It is priced at $72 before taxes and will be available the second quarter of 2013.